Photothermographic imaging systems are those imaging materials which, upon first being exposed to light in an imagewise fashion, produce an image when subsequently heated. The exposure to light or other radiation photoactivates or photodeactivates a component in the imageable element and subsequent heating causes an image forming reaction to differentially occur in exposed and unexposed regions.
Silver halide photothermographic imaging materials, often referred to as "dry silver" compositions because no liquid development is necessary to produce the final image, have been known in the art for many years. These imaging material basically comprise a light-insensitive, reducible silver source, a light-sensitive material which generates silver when irradiated, and a reducing agent for silver ion in the silver source. The light-sensitive material is generally photographic silver halide which must be in catalytic proximity to the light-insensitive silver source. Catalytic proximity is an intimate physical association of these two materials which enables catalysis of the reduction of the silver source by silver specks formed on the silver halide. Exposure of the silver halide to light produces small clusters of silver atoms. The imagewise distribution of these clusters is known in the art as the latent image. This latent image generally is not visible by ordinary means and the light-sensitive article must be further processed in order to produce a visual image. The visual image is produced by the catalytic reduction of silver ions which, as already noted, are in catalytic proximity to the specks of the latent image.
The silver source used in this area of technology is a material which contains a reducible source of silver ions. The earliest and still preferred source comprises silver salts of long chain carboxylic acids, usually of from 10 to 30 carbon atoms. The silver salt of behenic acid or mixtures of acids of like molecular weight have been primarily used. Salts of other organic acids or other organic materials such as silver imidazolates have been proposed, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,260,677 discloses the use of complexes of inorganic or organic silver salts as image source materials.
Color-forming, "dry silver" imaging systems are known in the photographic art. Color-formation is based on the oxidation/reduction reaction between the light-exposed silver salt of a fatty acid which has been halidized and dye-sensitized to a specific wavelength and is used with a chromogenic developer in the presence of elevated temperature. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,531,286 teaches the inclusion of color coupler components such as a p-phenylenediamine developer and a phenolic or active methylene coupler in close proximity to the light-sensitive emulsion. J. W. Carpenter and P. W. Lauf, Research Disclosure No. 17029, issued June 1978, review prior art relating to photothermographic silver halide systems which include color formation.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,240 discloses the use of sulfonamidophenol reducing agents and four equivalent photographic color couplers in thermographic and photothermographic emulsions to produce dye images including multicolor images.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,565 discloses the use of certain class of phenolic type photographic color couplers in photothermographic emulsions to provide a color image.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,021,250 discloses the use of 0.0025 percent leuco thiazine dye as a shelf life extender in a photothermographic system comprising an organic silver salt, a catalytic amount of a photosensitive silver halide, a reducing agent, and a binder. The example disclosed used 1.87 percent chlorothymol and 0.126 percent phthalazinone as the image producing reactants.
Leuco methylene blue, a thiazine dye, is known to be useful in recording systems. U.S. Pat. No. 2,646,367 discloses a carbonless copy system using, for example, benzoyl leuco methylene blue as the color forming agent. U.S. Pat. No. 3,447,944 discloses a thermographic copy system utilizing leuco methylene blue and its derivatives as color former. U.S. Pat. No. 4,309,255 relates to leuco methylene blue in electrochromic recording paper.
Japanese laid-open patent document 59-5239 discloses a 2-sheet, positive-acting, light-sensitive, heat-developable, diffusion, image transfer construction.